Rome: Total War-- Alexander

[Prince Toad]

Well, Creative Assembly has released a new expansion pack for Rome: Total War. This one centers around Alexander the Great's earth-shattering conquest of Persia, the superpower of his time, as well as some outlying Indian states. The map shifts far to the east to match his exploits, stretching from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River. There are over 60 new units, according to the site; there are also six historical battles, which must be unlocked sequentially. To get it, you download it from the site for 15 bucks-- good deal, if you ask me, especially since Rome is by far one of my favorite games.

I only got it tonight, so I don't have much personal experience with it. I beat the first two historical battles, Chaeronea and the Granicus River, and those were fun. Supposedly, the campaign is extremely difficult, which should be interesting. I've noticed that the AI is smarter in combat-- they'll block up chokepoints, for instance. Between the overwhelming superiority of Persia, and the improved AI, I'm hoping for a real challenge... the original and BI were not that difficult. (Although, I did keep battle difficulty on normal, because it doesn't change the AI, just the enemy's stats. But I did eventually put campaign difficulty up to Very Hard so I'd be fighting bigger armies, and that made the game more fun.)

I'll probably update this as I play the game. Has anyone else gotten it? Thoughts?

edit: Well, first update. I beat Halicarnassus, which was hard as hell. Freaking Persians come from everywhere, and hit you hard. It took me two tries to figure it out. Basically, I hung back and chased away their horse archers with hypaspists, archers, and javelinmen... between all those units, and their random light cavalry that fly out of the woods without warning, the situation managed to sort itself out. Kinda. Alexander had to deal with some of their light cavalry later on. Then they sent out their general and heavy Bactrian cavalry, but they weren't too tough with my phalangites and Alexander. Eventually, I had some hypaspists try to put up ladders... they made it most of the way and then sort of didn't feel like it anymore, so they just got killed by the archers on the walls. So I had a phalangite unit put up those ladders, and another unit put up ladders on the other side... it took three or four of them to take the walls, but it wasn't much of a problem and I had three basically full units when it was done, plus two medium-strength ones and two beat-up ones. After that the Persians were dumb enough to send some of their Greek mercenaries against my phalangites in the narrow streets, which didn't work out well for them. I had to deal with that a few times on the way, but when I eventually made it to the town square, I'd more or less won. It was just a matter of riding down the unit of archers they had sitting there, then flanking and crushing the remaining spearmen. The last unit was one of those damn horse archers that cause so much trouble early on... they couldn't do anything but watch as my phalanxes lowered their spears and advanced... they were all duly impaled. Issus is up next. Haven't seen the battlefield yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

edit: Okay... Issus is utterly impossible. I have 600 men to defeat 2100 Persians. Not even 600 tough elites, either. 240 relatively inexperienced phalangists, 70 of Alexander's personal heavy cavalry, 70 random other heavy cavalry, and some crappy hypaspists, archers, and javelinmen. I have to cross a river and defeat a Persian force three times my size (200 of them are slingers that start on my side of the river, and are easily dealt with via cavalry charge) with a tiny, poor army. Alexander does kick serious ass, but he can't do it all by himself, and none of the other units-- not even the phalangists, which are supposed to be the backbone of my army-- are reliable. Gah.

[d]

I doubt I'll get this, but I did finally get RT and BI. Love the games but haven't even finished a campaign yet, doing a Scipii campaign and got stuck in North Africa by the Carthaginian Army, their elephants decimated my army, utterly and completely. Most of my units were veterans too, it was my most experienced army, largest army, with my best general and heir, undefeated. He died, along with 87% of my army, did the math. Sounds like the only way your going to beat Isssus is via morale, try to scare the I will donate to VGF.I will donate to VGF.I will donate to VGF.I will donate to VGF. out of them, or if you can lure them out guerilla warfare, what's the time limit on the scenario?

[Prince Toad]

I get almost an hour, which is nice, but the AI's pretty smart. I'm not sure if I could lure them. However, that had occurred to me, and I believe it's worth a shot. Then again, they have outrageous missile superiority (400 good foot archers plus some horse archers, and Immortals, which have bows, to my 65 foot archers and 35 javelinmen) so they might just shoot down any unit that gets close enough to do that. I have no light cavalry or missile cavalry, and only one unit of 35 skirmisher/light infantry, which is utterly useless as far as I can tell.

Yeah, Rome was amazing. BI was a lot of fun, but I liked the original better.

[d]

That does suck. Hmmm..., maybe just go straight for the general, straight up the middle and smash them. I know they'll outnumber you drasically, but if you smash into them that's a negative to moral and if you can manage to kill their general you might be able to break them. Remember, you just have to make your enemy run to score a victory, you don't have to kill them all, even though it is fun to do that. Or is there a place on the terrain where you can limit the front to one or two units while sending your cavalry around to hit the missile troops, being able to move your cavalry around that way would leave you open to a similar hit, but I think that's a calculated risk you'd have to take.

[Prince Toad]

Well, I'm crossing a river. They've got spearmen sitting up and down the only fordable portion. I can break through their lines with my cavalry, possibly kill or rout the general (though he's on a chariot), maybe kill their foot archers (except the horse archers), but I still need Alexander and the other cavalry to deal with the hundreds and hundreds of spearmen, not to mention their heavy cavalry, and by that time I doubt there would be more than 25 of my cavalry out of 140 left, if that. Plus the Persian units tend to have good morale, and if Alexander dies, I lose. However, routing them is obviously the better choice.

edit: I RULE. I have attained victory at Issus. That was easily one of the hardest battles I've ever fought... and really, it was mostly the fault of dumb AI. They improved it some, but not enough, apparently. First, I rained some fire arrows down on the easternmost spearman unit. Then, I was able to make the other cavalry units into wedges and squeeze them by that unit, and then crush it between them and Alexander, while my phalanxes marched across the river with my hypaspists, and my archers and javelinmen tried to draw fire. I had all the cavalry, Alexander included, ride around and rout their archers... eventually they pinned Darius's chariots against the sea and destroyed all but the general unit himself. Darius made it away, but the effect was just as good. While this was happening, my phalanxes and hypaspists were busy heroically fending off the Persian spearmen and heavy cavalry. They were close to flanking my phalanxes with their own, but I managed to bring the cavalry back in time and rout them. Eventually, I also needed the cavalry to fight off theirs. Basically from then on I was just charging the cavalry around, hitting spearmen in the rear while advancing on them with my phalanxes, which as anyone who played Rome will know is one of the best ways to rout any unit. By the end, it was three nearly-dead units-- two phalangites and one of my cavalry-- plus Alexander, who was pretty beat up himself, vs. a full, fresh unit of Immortals. I had to chase them around a bit, but eventually the same old tactic worked its magic. It was a hell of a fight, and I'm proud of it... even if it was mostly the result of poor AI. I'm happy.

Next up is Gaugamela, which ought to be easier-- I get a better army, and as far as I can tell, the Persians get a worse army. Plus I don't have to cross any rivers. We'll see, though.

Yeah, that wasn't so bad. A lot of fun, though. I just made a little pentagon of phalangists, put archers and hypaspists inside, and had my cavalry run around behind their lines trying to kill Darius and the rest of their cavalry. Fortunately, they didn't have any archers, or my phalanx-fortress could have run into problems. They had some elephants and chariots, but my archers eventually got the elephants to run amok, and the chariots were duly impaled on the end of phalangists' spears. Alexander and the three companion units were able to beat all the cavalry and Darius's chariot unit without too many problems... well, that's not true, two of them routed. But they kicked a lot of ass beforehand, and Alexander plus the other unit finished up anything they hadn't. Then it was just down to their infantry-- Persian spearmen (crappy infantry) and some Immortals. A combination of running onto my spears and being run down by the cavalry dealt with them, although it took a while. The hypaspists finally proved their worth-- they did well at plugging up a hole in the formation when the Persians sort of broke in and killed a large number of soldiers from two of my phalangist units. It wasn't nearly as desperate as Issus, but it was still fun.

Now the final battle: Hydaspes, against the Indians. I'm not sure how it'll work out... they have a huge army, but mine's pretty big too. I have several phalangists, but I'm not sure how much good they'll be. Basically, they're sitting near the two fords where the Indian army is situated, with a couple other units, while the rest of the army is way upstream at an unguarded crossing. I'm supposed to cross the river with the other units and flank them. But it's going to be hard to fight without phalangists as a base... we'll see how it goes. Probably not tonight, though. (edit: I actually did get two phalangist units with Alexander's force.)

Alright, beat Hydaspes. Fun battle. Turned out there was a little army hiding in the forests across the bank where my main force was, so I had to deal with them... then they sent their huge main force over. My troops put up a good fight, and managed to rout one of the three elephant units, plus all the chariots and cavalry, but their elephants eventually proved too much. Alexander and his cavalry might have been the only unit to make it out alive. But I'd crippled them severely-- all they had was an elephant general, another elephant unit, a beat-up light infantry/spearman unit, a healthy unit of the same type, and a unit of archers. I still had the four phalangists, one unit of archers, and one unit of heavy cavalry that were "guarding" the other fords... so I was able to bring them across and make a little line, behind which I was able to hide Alexander, whose unit had gone from 148 or so to about 15. The heavy cavalry did a good job of slaughtering their infantry and archers, and the phalangists served for the elephants. Good stuff. Now I suppose I'll work on the campaign... which I set on Very Hard... and is supposed to be hard anyway... we'll see how that works out. Probably very poorly.

[Prince Toad]

Campaign time! Aw, man, it's so much fun. Anyone who had R:TW and doesn't have Alexander, change that immediately.

As I said, I set the campaign difficulty to Very Hard, which basically means that other countries have big ol' armies and sort of run themselves better. I keep battle difficulty on Normal, but I'd probably go insane if it was any higher. In the original, Very Hard campaign difficulty wasn't too bad. Maybe they had one or two more large armies before you started running around destroying their tiny garrisons with your huge force. (Except Egypt, who was always tough... the full legion I sent in one game nearly got decimated before reinforcements could arrive. But even they garrisoned their cities poorly, especially the huge, important, rich ones in Egypt proper.)

But in Alexander... whoo. I've probably destroyed seven or eight full or nearly-full armies, sometimes two of them in the same battle, and I'm barely out of Turkey. What makes that even more interesting is that Alexander doesn't get a full army to deal with the constant Persian onslaught. Neither does Parmenio (who's technically in as Parmenion, for some reason), nor whatever random garrison leaders/benefactors I adopt. (You get a lot of those, fortunately.) I have to use terrain, Alexander and other general units, and perhaps most of all the incredible strength of my phalanxes (especially phalangists, to a lesser extent hoplites) in order to win battle after battle against overwhelming odds. For example, I won one battle with fewer than 800 men, and I killed over 2500-- and I wasn't even defending a bridge. Up in the north, where I'm currently almost done subduing the barbarians (I'm literally besieging the last barbarian city, Tanais in Scythia), it's a little more like the regular campaign... armies of about equal size going up against each other. The barbarians don't really give much of a fight, but the Persians do. It's all a lot of fun, and I feel genuinely challenged without being completely overwhelmed. Kudos to Creative Assembly.

Speaking of defending bridges, it's a little ridiculous... especially when they rout towards your side of the bridge. One time my phalangist unit guarding the bridge was like a freaking machine gun... just mowed everyone down as they charged in. I think that's the only unit I've ever had get over 1000 kills in a single battle... had 1100-something. It was insane. Plus, that army was, uh, Parmenio, two phalangists, maybe three hoplites, and I think a unit of javelinmen (or maybe hypaspists). And that was it. Against what I believe was two huge armies, although that could have been a different fight. I suppose the kill count would have been higher if it was two nearly-full armies. Still, it was pretty crazy.